“Thank you very much for your cooperation. If there are any other issues later, we will contact you again.”
Shen Kui walked out of the police station in a daze, only to be pulled into a tight embrace by Tian Ke, who rushed straight at her.
“Wuwuwu. You scared me to death, Huahua!” Tian Ke cried and wailed while holding her.
Shen Kui reacted slowly after a moment, then gradually raised her hand and gently patted Tian Ke on the back.
“What exactly happened? Your call was suddenly cut off at three o’clock. When I tried calling back, I couldn’t get through no matter what. I thought something had happened to you…”
Shen Kui felt the blood in her body slowly beginning to circulate again. Warmth gradually returned to her limbs, and the lingering chill that refused to leave her body slowly receded with Tian Ke’s arrival.
She took several deep breaths, trying hard to steady her emotions, and said in a trembling voice, “Lu Ting is dead.”
Tian Ke didn’t understand at first. “Who? Who’s dead?”
“Lu Ting, my colleague,” Shen Kui said numbly. “She fell from upstairs and happened to land right in front of me.”
Shen Kui had witnessed death before.
The deaths of her parents still remained in her mind, leaving behind vivid and brutal traces to this day. But the state of Lu Ting’s death had shocked her even more than when her parents passed away.
Whenever she closed her eyes, that shattered face would appear before her.
Shen Kui could not forget what she had seen when she finally gathered the courage to lean out and look down from the windowsill.
The shrubs had been smashed into a deep depression. Lu Ting lay on her back in the middle of them, her limbs twisted at strange angles. Her long, seaweed-like hair covered most of her face, and the half of her face left exposed was both beautiful and broken. A thick red-and-white fluid seeped out along the cracks in her cheek…
Her gaze was hollow, the corners of her lips curled into a strange arc. She lay there quietly, as if waiting for something.
“The time she fell… was exactly three in the morning.”
Shen Kui kept rubbing her index finger over and over again. It was an unconscious reaction whenever she felt anxious.
She forced herself not to recall that scene. As she spoke, she tried to sort through her thoughts.
“During the day today at the company, she even chatted with me. My package, that leather jacket, was also given to me by her.”
“You mean…” Tian Ke began, then stopped herself.
“I have a guess…” Shen Kui said carefully. The thought kept circling in her mind. Without realizing it, she rubbed her index finger harder. “I don’t know if it’s right, but I suspect… this has something to do with me.”
“How is that possible!” Tian Ke interrupted loudly, her voice trembling. Clearly, Shen Kui’s guess had frightened her. “Don’t think nonsense. What does this have to do with you? It’s just a coincidence!”
“But don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence?” Shen Kui said faintly. “Leaving everything else aside, I carefully thought back. Just the things that happened between her and me today already have at least three overlaps: the leather jacket, the forum, and three in the morning.”
Tian Ke argued back, “She’s a receptionist. It’s perfectly normal for her to come into contact with packages. And that forum—there’s so much traffic there. It’s not strange if she likes browsing it. As for three in the morning, that’s even more of a coincidence. Do people have to pick a time to commit suicide?”
“Her home is more than ten kilometers away from mine in a straight line. There’s no reason for her to run all the way here in the middle of the night just to jump off a building.”
Shen Kui’s explanation made Tian Ke fall silent.
After a long moment, she asked in a trembling voice, “Y-you mean… she was…”
“I don’t know.” Shen Kui shook her head. “If she was murdered, then what would the killer’s motive be?”
“Did you tell the police about these things?”
“I did. They said they would investigate and told me to go home and wait for news.” What Shen Kui did not say was that the police’s attitude clearly showed they had not taken the series of information she reported very seriously.
“Forget it, forget it. Don’t think about this right now. Let’s go back first. I’m getting the creeps,” Tian Ke said. She had left in a hurry and was only wearing a thin dress. Now, standing in the cold wind, she was shivering all over, unable to tell whether she was cold or frightened.
“This weather is really strange. It’s clearly July. How can the nights be this chilly…”
The summers in A City were famously scorching. This year’s climate was indeed unusual. Once night fell and the heat faded, the temperature would suddenly drop twenty degrees below. When the wind blew, it carried a sharp chill.
Shen Kui was lost in her thoughts and didn’t notice Tian Ke’s complaints.
She didn’t dare return to her own home. Tonight, she could only make do by staying at Tian Ke’s place. But what about tomorrow?
What would happen tomorrow?
For the first time in her life, Shen Kui actually felt a trace of fear toward the unknown tomorrow.
*** ***
A chaotic night finally passed. Even though her body was already exhausted to the extreme, her biological clock still woke Shen Kui up right on time at seven.
She browsed the forum for a while. The message she had sent to 412L showed that it had been read, but there was no reply. No other related posts had appeared on the forum either. Meanwhile, the class group chat was lively with discussion about the details of the gathering on Saturday. Shen Kui skimmed through it briefly but didn’t see any useful information.
Still groggy, she got up and finished washing up. Just as she was about to head out, she remembered that after what happened last night, the boss had immediately given everyone a day off.
For the time being, she didn’t need to go to work, but things still had to be dealt with.
Tian Ke was still asleep, so Shen Kui decided to take this time to visit an old acquaintance.
Back when the subway accident happened, it had been an intern police officer from Huaixihe Police Station named Zhang Chunfeng who dug Shen Kui out of the wreckage. Even before Shen Kui was sent to the welfare home, it had also been Zhang Chunfeng who provided care and help for her the whole time.
Over the years, although the two of them had not kept in close contact, there had always been a sense of care and affection between them. So when everything happened, Shen Kui thought of him immediately.
Originally, they had arranged to meet in the afternoon. But since work had suddenly been canceled, Shen Kui felt too restless to sit still. Early in the morning, she carried two cartons of milk and knocked on Zhang Chunfeng’s door.
After exchanging greetings back and forth for a while, Shen Kui moved to the main topic.
“Uncle Zhang, the reason I came this time is actually to ask you about a few things,” Shen Kui said cautiously. “Do you still remember how my parents’ personal belongings were handled after their accident back then?”
Zhang Chunfeng paused in the middle of pouring tea. He thought for a moment, then said, “Under normal circumstances, they would be taken back by the family. You were young at the time, and if there was no one else in your family to receive them… they were very likely handled collectively.”
At this point, he seemed to recall something else. “But I remember that a few years ago, our city seemed to set up a historical and cultural museum. Inside it there’s a special exhibition hall for the Line 1 accident, displaying some of the belongings of the victims. You could find some time to go take a look.”
Shen Kui nodded and asked again, “Then do you know how badly Huaixihe Station was damaged back then?”
Zhang Chunfeng frowned and thought for a moment. “Hmm… I really don’t know about that. But it should’ve been pretty serious, I guess. At the time, we went down from the previous platform and walked to the site of the incident. Huaixihe Station was even deeper. My team turned back on the spot after we rescued the people we could, so I’m not too clear about what happened afterward.”
Shen Kui nodded thoughtfully. “Alright, I understand. Sorry to trouble you, Uncle Zhang.”
*** ***
As soon as Shen Kui left, she headed straight for the museum.
She had looked up information online. The museum had been built by the A City government three years ago. It was positioned as a historical and cultural museum. Many well-known events from A City’s history, big and small, could be traced there.
The Line 1 subway accident, being the traffic accident with the highest number of casualties and the greatest social impact recorded in A City, had its own exhibition hall specially opened by the museum as a warning and memorial. When it was first completed, it had appeared in the local news several times, and the accident itself had been repeatedly reported on again as a result.
Perhaps Shen Kui had subconsciously avoided this kind of news. Even though the museum was less than two kilometers away from her workplace, she had not heard a single thing about it for all this time.
On the way to the museum, Shen Kui looked silently out the window. At eighty kilometers per hour, the scenery outside stretched into a long line of mottled light and shadow. She thought back to what Zhang Chunfeng had reminded her before she left.
He probably thought that Shen Kui had never truly let it go, so he earnestly advised her to untie the knot in her heart and live her life well.
Shen Kui let out a long sigh. When the tree longs for calm but the wind refuses to cease, what could she do? Of course, she also wanted to live her life in peace. But after what happened last night, she realized with absolute clarity that if she did not uncover the truth behind all of this, she would likely never be able to return to a normal life in the days to come.
*** ***
By the time she arrived at the museum, it was already twelve noon. Shen Kui didn’t bother to eat and hurried inside.
A City was not a tourist city, and its historical heritage was not particularly deep. The museum had few visitors and was usually not open on ordinary days unless it was a holiday. On the way there, Shen Kui had contacted the staff in advance. After she explained her identity and the reason for her visit, they kindly agreed to open the accident exhibition hall specially for her.
Perhaps this was the only advantage of being someone involved in the accident, Shen Kui thought wryly.
“This is the exhibition hall,” the staff member said. He had a straightforward personality and spoke nonstop. “Even during holidays, there aren’t many visitors. When the city does things like this, it’s basically just for show, just putting up appearances. Everyone understands that.”
“Do you have any belongings of the victims here?” Shen Kui asked.
“Of course. Look, they’re in there.” The staff member pointed to a room at the far end. “Clothes, bags, all kinds of things. Don’t look down on them just because they seem ordinary. Each one has its own story. Some of them are really touching…”
The words “clothes” immediately struck Shen Kui’s nerves, and she quickly asked, “Then have you ever seen a black leather jacket?”
“A black leather jacket…” The staff member thought for a moment, then suddenly slapped his hand. “Yes! I remember now. We had a thief here once before, and among the things that were stolen was a black leather jacket!”
So the leather jacket she received had been stolen from here.
Shen Kui instantly felt a sense of sudden clarity. Among all the possibilities she had imagined, the truth of it being a “stolen exhibit” was almost too ordinary.
She even felt a subtle disappointment, like, so it was actually just this.
Her heart had only just begun to settle when she heard the staff member continue, “It wasn’t just the leather jacket. Several things were stolen. Just some inconspicuous little items, like a notebook, a doll, things like that… If I remember correctly, a total of seven items were stolen.”
Seven.
Shen Kui’s heart jolted. The calm she had just regained instantly lifted again.
Seven survivors. Seven photos. Seven missing relics…
No matter how slow she might be, Shen Kui could see the connection between them.
If you enjoy my works and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi. Thank you for your support.
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152